


Truths

by ShadowSelene (Shadowdianne)



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-09
Updated: 2015-12-09
Packaged: 2018-05-05 18:33:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5386103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadowdianne/pseuds/ShadowSelene
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Emma's dealing with the emotional turmoil of having been the host for the dark curse. Too often, she feels that bitterness that haunted her as the dark one return in full form. She somehow misses the revelation of being "free" to "hate" her loved ones for the pain they caused her and she's terrified by it. She confronts one of them one day (I let you choose btw snow, David or Regina)<br/>Asked by pauavalon via twitter</p>
            </blockquote>





	Truths

_The air smelt like blood, old dried blood, the kind of blood that is behind your nails, that it haunts your dreams, that it makes you weep._

_The air smelt like fire, wood burning in the distance, heat caressing bodies, licking them._

_The air smelt like snow, snow like the tale you weren’t exactly part of but still it will forever mean something to you._

_The air…._

Emma opened her eyes, bile already on her tongue, making her pull a face at the acid taste of it. Sleep, even though wasn’t impossible anymore, had proven to be elusive. And every time she closed her eyes, thinking that she would finally sleep the voices appeared, whispering to her the lies that had been real once, that had meant something once.

Blinking, she looked around, sighing at the familiar surroundings, the station welcoming her in the same warm light that bathed its floors.

One week, she thought, biting her lips and looking back at her hands as she swallowed back the bile. Her hands were still covered in cuts and bruises, bruises that without her magic they would surely need time to heal properly. Like the many ones she had also caused, that she had also witnessed. Sighing and closing her eyes again she tried to sleep, the figures the voices had carried still on her mind, making her tremble for a second, the cold, blood-lust words too powerful, even for her.

_You are not the dark one anymore_

Those had been the words that Snow had uttered to her after the big revelation, happiness washing over her face, a small but audible laugh coming out from David a second after that, their arms already enveloping her.

Sighing, she opened her eyes, her mouth falling open as she found herself looking in front of none other but Regina, her brown eyes looking straightly at her, one brow arched, as if challenging her.

Regina had been the only one that when she had turned, her mouth already open with lies and small reassuring words she didn’t really think to be true, had looked at her once and sighed, something close to understanding shinning on her eyes for a second before being swallowed back by her usual blank stare, too dark for Emma to understand it.

“Regina” She found herself saying, a tired tone that didn’t exactly match her defeated state but was the only thing she managed to say between the once murmured words that still haunted her.

“Still trying to sleep while working?”

The jab was precise but wasn’t venomous and the smile at the end of it made Emma smirk slightly. After what had happened the truce between her and Regina, albeit fragile, had been still there and it had actually been Regina the one who had been there when Emma had tried to explain to Henry everything that had transpired back on Camelot. She had been there also when Emma had explained to her parents her doubts, her fears and when Emma had finally tried to find the words for Hook’s final decision she had been the one who she had looked at, knowing that Regina would actually understood her, know the whys she wasn’t willing to share.

Not even to her, not after everything that had transpired.

“Am I going to get fired?” She asked back and the words sounded mechanical even to her own ears but Regina choose to not dwell on it, her piercing eyes searching for something else as she seated in front of Emma, her hands on the desk that the blonde had been using as footrest.

The silence that followed that question made Emma fidget, her eyes going back and forth to the minute details that completed the image of the woman in front of her; the minuscule earrings, the why her nails were painted, the tiny but real wrinkled around her eyes….

And the sentences, sentences that she knew weren’t hers anymore but a memory of a memory, came back to her, whispering, chanting, laughing.

_Death is black like the raven, like the night, like despair. Illness is red like blood and the hundreds of hearts you will break. Sadness is purple like the skin of the eyelids that will never rest…_

“Emma?”

She swallowed and looked at Regina, her face too open, too fragile. The former queen sighed and looked at her own hands in which one single ring rested, the light making it blink under Emma’s glazed pupils, a small and slow smile forming on her lips, the smile of the one who had already lost all sanity. And maybe she had indeed lost hers.

“Emma”

This second time the timbre of Regina’s voice was stronger, more like the one the Regina she had known five years prior would direct at her. But she still looked directly at her with no venom, no hardness and Emma felt a weight on her shoulders, weight because it would be better, so much better to feel rage, too feel threatened.

_Yellow is for longing, like the sun and gold that you may see, the future you may desire but you may never have._

“I’m afraid” She finally blurted “And tired”

Regina didn’t say anything, just waited and Emma actually hated the fact that she could crack so easily under the former queen eyes but she also knew that it would be the only one who could make that possible.

“I know why you are here” She said instead of the words that desired to spill out from her mouth, lies and truths she didn’t want to face.

“They are worried about you” Regina replied softly, swiftly. “It has been days”

“And what?” Emma cut, her hands now fists, her voice now at the point of starting to be a scream, to fill the emptiness of the station, an emptiness that seemed to be on her own body as she tried to find the words.

“Can’t I have a little bit of space? Of time?” She asked and this time her voice did break, even though Regina’s expression didn’t.

“They love you” Regina said carefully and Emma almost wanted to snort because if someone could understand Regina’s logic was her.

She, the orphan, who had grew up hating the idea of love but secretly giving to it the power that nothing like magic nor religion would ever had. Love, the only thing that could save her, love, the only thing that could make her free from a cruel and loveless system. Love was the answer, forever would be and as long as love was at the other side, the possibility of having someone who loved you, you were ready to take any risks. Even though you claimed a hundred of times that you hated said love, that you didn’t believe in said love.

Regina hated happy ever afters and yet she had craved for one, she wanted to dismiss everything just because the possibility of having one. And yet… and yet.

“But I don’t anymore” She found herself saying and it was a lie but she felt scared of how truth it sounded.

“Yes, you do” Regina replied and as she rose from the chair, taller and much more stronger than Emma felt in that moment. She looked at her, her eyes searching for something the blonde wasn’t sure if she would ever be able to give. “You still do”

“But I can’t right now”

And it also looked far too real to be a lie.

“I can’t anymore, I can’t… shake the hate and the lies and the darkness just because a curse has been revoked” She started again, pouring her words over Regina like ink, dark and rotten. “I can’t be the woman they want me to be, I can’t be the woman you wish I would be”

“I don’t desire…” Regina started but Emma shook her head, her hands now extended in front of her, and she could remember; dark, red, purple and yellow, death, illness, sadness and longing.

“Yes, you do, because it all would be easier if I could already be something else, but I can’t”

Raising and finally looking directly at Regina’s eyes Emma touched the wooden desk that was between them, its surface the only real thing she chose to feel.

“I can’t because I hated them Regina” She finally said, tears threatning to spill, hot tears that hurt to shed but couldn’t be stopped, not for too long at least. “I hated them and I let that hate consume me, I could have, I wanted to! It was easier to be angry, it was easier to imagine… to think…”

“Darkness doesn’t have a hold in you anymore” Regina enunciated carefully but the two of them knew that her answer wasn’t true, would never be true. Darkness always was there, always a shadow.

“But the words that were in my head were real Regina” She said softly, sighing, losing the battle, feeling spent. She seated once again on the chair and looked at the sheriff’s star she had put on the desk the second she had entered in the station, not knowing what to do with her anymore. “They were real, that’s the worst part, that the lies looked far too real to only be lies and them… “

“Hurt you” Regina finished, seating also and taking Emma’s right hand between hers, their touch creating a soft magical cloud that disappeared almost a second ago. Neither of them commented on it, neither of them looked at it twice. But the magic still hung between them, like old perfume. “Emma… this is how dark magic works, by letting you enter on those truths that we sometimes think about while trying to think that they are lies”

“But you all hurt me” Emma replied and she knew that she sounded like a little girl but she was too tired, far too tired and Regina had always know when she lied. Like she was also able to deduce. “And I couldn’t… I felt alone, judged, I felt used, I felt…”

“Abused” Regina said again, finishing the sentence once again. “And you may feel like that Emma, it’s normal”

“But I don’t want to” The blonde admitted. And it was everything there, hate and resentment and tiredness and magic but she couldn’t make it work, not like it had already worked.

“That’s the price you want to pay” Regina pointed out and Emma sighed, knowing that Regina was right, like usual. And perhaps that was the reason why she couldn’t exactly feel mad, couldn’t exactly hate her.

“I’m done with prices” She answered though, this time looking directly at their intertwined hands, her digits curling around Regina’s, easy, far too easy.

And she knew that it was still too little and she still needed to admit, to talk, to understand, but she chose to close her eyes and cry, the sound of a chocked sob being the only thing that filled the station, Regina’s gentle hands soothing her, waiting for her.

“I’m scared” She finally said and as she finally turned and looked at Regina she saw the former queen with tears on her own eyes and a minute “I know” falling already from her lips.

“I won’t let you down Emma”

_“Not again”_

And Emma found herself believing her words, maybe because it sounded too close to a truth to be a lie, maybe because they sounded exactly like a lie that sounded far too good to not be a truth.


End file.
